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ZONE / Zone Battle thread of vEry awEsomEnEss

Ladies 'n Gents,

welcome to the ZONE / Zone Battle thread of vEry awEsomEnEss!

Within this thread you can share whatever you have to say about the ZONE
mode and its multiplayer counterpart Zone Battle. Share your feelings, your love,
or even your hate. Post your records, your pictures, your tips & tricks, or just
simply have some chillin' discussions over here. Everyone is invited!

Enjoy!

.ZONE

.Zone Battle

Description:
Zone Battle is a multiplayer variant of the ZONE mode included within the Fury
downloadable content for WipEout HD. Contrary to the ZONE mode, Zone Battle
has a preset target zone to be reached. The one who reaches the target zone
first wins the race. To rabidly progress towards the target zone fly over Zone
Pads that are distributed all over the track. These pads will load your craft
with Zone Energy indicated by a Zone Bar displayed on your HUD. The
accumulated energy can either be converted into a boost that will accelerate
your craft to a higher zone level or into vital lost energy your craft depends
on. Each time you boost, a Zone Barrier will be left in your wake as an
obstacle. Avoid these barriers by all means necessary. Hitting a barrier
without being shielded will cost you Zone Energy and a large fraction of your
craft's vital energy. A brief shield is provided by just absorbing your Zone
Energy.

Technical details:
Running over multiple Zone Pads, without using the current accumulated
Zone Energy in-between, will increase your total Zone Energy a lot faster. The
following table shows how the Zone Energy translate to zone levels and vital
energy upon use either by boosting or absorbing the Zone Energy;

Getting destroyed will cost you 5 zone levels that you had already attained.

Tips & Tricks:
First and formost, get youself familiar with a track where you wanna race a
Zone Battle on. Know where the pads are located and get used to the handling
of your Zone Battle craft. Pretty obvious, isn't it? Wait! How you can
gradually improve will be described on the end of this section. But let's have
a look at some things you should care about when doing Zone Battle;

remember the target zone

watch the rate at which you opponents improve

watch who got eliminated

always try to fill-up your Zone Bar

expect more barriers close to the general racing line, on straights, and
right after and before pads

an opponent having the shield put on won't likely to boost within the next
few pads, but stay sharp, don't necessarily ride straight behind

always remember where you saw a barrier last time around

Filling up your craft with Zone Energy depends on your piloting skills and at
the situation at hand. As longer you can hold up filling your craft with Zone
Energy as further you can go while boosting, but as higher the risk becomes
loosing Zone Energy and vital energy due to a possible barrier hit.

Techniques: How to treat a Zone Barrier?
A Zone Barrier will be indicated ahead of time by a new device installed in
every new Fury craft, called the Barrier Prediction Unit (BPU) displayed on
your HUD. But be careful, this device has its limits.... The BPU will give
you a hint ahead of time where on the track a barrier is positioned once you
are in close proximity. If the BPU flags a barrier then immediately plan an
alternative route and adjust the craft accordingly whether you can just
actually see the barrier or not. Always try to swing-by in a rather smooth way
to not mess up your steering on high speeds. However, if there isn't enough
time or room for a proper swing-by maneuver then, odd as it seems, target the
barrier and to a quick side-shift just before you would actually hit it.
Side-shifting is quite effective on being 'close' to a barrier. Finally, if
there isn't even enough time for a side-shift then the last option left is
your shield.

Hence, depending on the proximity to a barrier, we have the following
techniques one can use to get rid of them;

smooth swing-by

side-shift

shield

Hints:

Don't smash into a wall to dodge a barrier. This would mess up you steering
and will cost lots of vital energy on high speeds.

Since a barrier hit cost 40 vital energy, always try to keep at least this
amount of energy. However, going for victory sometimes means to take the risk
of running sub 40 to collect Zone Energy for the final boost.

If your Zone Bar is almost full and if you got plenty of vital energy
(>> 40) then don't put the shield on for an "inevitable" barrier hit, just
boost through the barrier and refill your vital energy shortly thereafter.

If the BPU fags a barrier (that is currently not within your sight) on the,
for example, left side of the track, then prepare to go for the clear right
side because the indicated barrier may stay closer to the middle of the track
as you might think by just looking at the BPU.

if you got caught by a tie in your brain whether you should go left or
right around a barrier -- activate your shield (if you can)

Wanna annoy your opponents? Then just place a barrier at a blind spot
or watch at what places the BPU fails and place them over there. xD

special: Show that you own the competition by winning a 55 Zone Battle
with 62.9 zones.

I pwn at Phantom Speed Lap, but I suck at Zone Battle. How to git gud am
cry!? xD : I've thought off a way on how everyone can make real progress
in Zone Battle. Go to Racebox and choose Zone Battle (max. zone 55, difficulty
Novice) and choose a track where you wanna improve. Now start the race and
boost up to the zone level you feel quite comfortable with (you can do perfect
laps easily etc.). From there on never boost again! Just let the zone level
increase by itself and try to lap perfectly by practicing to dodge all the
barriers on the track. The AI takes ages to catch up (if you boost up to zone
10 or so). So you got plenty of time practicing the whole thing. If you wanna
have some more barriers on the track then switch over to Skilled.

The content of this post will change over time. Do not necessarily quote
directly. The image size of some pictures shown do exceed the 50KB limit of
WipeoutZone, but for this post there exists an exception to the rule to go
beyond this limit, which was *explicitly* granted by the owner of WipeoutZone to
not hinder my on-going creativity in creating something very unique for all the
ZONE fans out there.

Last edited by ProblemSolver; 16th August 2010 at 02:22 PM.
Reason: took the rankings offline

WipEout HD version 2.0 was released just yesterday. The patch also includes
some (unofficial) changes to the ZONE mode. Here are some things I've spotted;

01: far-view is now as fluent as cockpit-view
02: the low-shield sound is back
03: less tearing at some well known spots
04: handling + controller update

10: not fully verified: the ZONE craft can take more damage
11: halo effect during color-scheme transition; removed
12: voice before start; removed

20: some bugs on low-shield sound
21: more polygonal aliasing
22: random huge frame drops now and then

more to come ...

Can somebody please verify point 10? I'm not quite sure about it. I hardly
noticed anything on Anulpha Pass (not the best track to test for such a thing,
for me), but I did some test-runs on Vineta K, Moa, and Metropia, and I was
just wondering why the shield didn't decreased as fast as usual when hitting
hard.

Heh, I don't get why they removed the bloom again, it was a cool effect. Epilepsy tests didn't agree once more? Or the framerate in Zone Battle?

Control update makes zone zeus imo even more easy. I had a piss poor run trying to test your damage theory (I'm still unsure, though I think the ship seems fairly resistant as it can have two light scrapes and remain at the same energy percentage) and still got to 76. I made a perfect lap on zone 60, that doesn't happen.

Last edited by Darkdrium777; 22nd July 2009 at 06:42 AM.
Reason: removed pop in issue, it's the track, not the mode.

I noticed an improvement in controller responsiveness as well... got 37 consecutive perfect zones on my first post-patch zone attempt (though I suspect the removal of the beautiful but annoying bloom effect has a major part to play in this), my previous record being 26. The accuracy was very unusual at higher speeds, though, but I probably just need to get used to it... maybe I can get to zone 80 now.

The return of the beeping when under 10% shield is probably going to drive me crazy, though.

#10 could be true I suppose. I was trying out wipeout 2097 hud yesterday, so its hard to tell how much shield you have left when you're below 50%. Eg when you have 70 shield I think the bar itself is half full. So it appeared to me that my shield went down slower, but I may have just had more initially if you know what I mean. Anyway I'll see when I go back to HD hud.

Also am I the only one who prefers the close up view? The craft feels more easier to control that way.